JUDr. Zdeněk Kučera

“I think that it was on Friday, May 4th, I think it was Friday. People were already overwriting German signs in the streets in the evening, and the following day the Prague Uprising really broke out, I remember that I had the radio on and I was listening to the twelve o’clock news, and the announcer was reading the news in a terribly fast voice. And suddenly, what happened was that the radio building had been taken over and they began calling for help, calling for Czech police and the Czech government army. The army corps consisted of some seven thousand people. Well, that’s what I remember, I was sixteen at that time, or about to turn seventeen, and I know that I was helping to build barricades in the street.”

“I heard about it in the Dutch radio. From the report I could see what was happening in Prague. There were more of us Czechs in Holland at that time and we obviously gathered together. We immediately went to the embassy to find out what was happening. I have to say that the embassy staff treated us nicely, and they did whatever they could for us. Our embassy there was fine. I was quite scared, because I had three children in Prague, and I was afraid of what was going on. I remember that I tried to call my wife at home, but I succeeded only several days later, and I remember that I had to wait for that phone call. I had it reserved for seven in the evening, and I got the phone call only at one o’clock at night, but at least I learnt that they were alright and nothing had happened to them. I wanted to return to Prague to be with them, but they were persuading me to stay there until the end, and so I came back to Prague as late as 28th September.”